Acpos appoints comms officer for central PR trial

In his temporary post, Stuart Wilson will spend the next eight months examining whether Acpos would benefit from a central communications function.

Currently, each Scottish police force has its own communications function, but Acpos has decided to test a central comms system.

Assistant chief constable Malcolm Dickson said: ‘It was identified that we needed somebody working at national level to give the public a better understanding of the challenges of policing in Scotland, and perhaps more importantly the successes we are achieving on a daily basis.’

Wilson’s key tasks are to provide strategic comms guidance to the eight Scottish police forces and maintain a close partnership with the Scottish Executive on police and criminal justice issues.

Wilson said: ‘In the past, each force would have their own press office, which was proving very frustrating for the media, so I will co-ordinate centrally and at the end of the pilot I will write an evaluation report.’

Wilson will stay in the Scottish Executive-funded post until the end of November. The former journalist was previously manager in the media and PR department at Strathclyde Police.